Optical recording media, typically optical recording disks are of great interest as large capacity information recording media. Such optical recording media include those of the rewritable type such as phase change optical recording media and magneto-optical recording media and those of the write-once type such as pit formation type optical recording media.
Recently, there were proposed optical recording disks which can be once written or recorded in accordance with the compact disk (abbreviated as CD, hereinafter) standard. (See Nikkei Electronics, Jan. 23, 1989, No. 465, page 107; the Functional Dye Department of the Kinki Chemical Society, Mar. 3, 1989, Osaka Science & Technology Center; and SPIE, Vol. 1078, Optical Data Storage Topical Meeting, 80, 1989.) This type of disk has a dye layer, a reflective Au layer, and a protective layer stacked on a transparent resin substrate in this order. That is, the reflective layer is disposed in close contact with the dye layer.
These optical recording disks, however, are less resistant against weathering, especially light because organic dyes used therein are degraded by ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. The disks are thus difficult to keep reliable for an extended period of time both before and after recording.